Winter Visitors

Our countryside is inundated with thousands of visitors flying in from the northern regions of continental Europe. These ‘tourists’ spread themselves in loose flocks over the greener fields and bushier hedges. They are known as the ‘winter thrushes’. Older people called them ‘siocáns’, meaning ‘the frost birds’ as their arrival coincides with a drop in temperatures and the beginning of the winter frosts, so this is the perfect week to give them a few moments’ thought. The siocán is actually a fieldfare - a bird somewhat bigger than a blackbird. The first sign of its arrival may well be the quick cackle of its flight call – sounding like ‘cack-cack-cack-cack’. This is delivered as it flies high above the tallest trees. It is a striking bird with a grey head and rump, dark brown back and wings, spotted breast and black tail and wingtips.

Its cousin the redwing is often the more numerous, traveling in large flocks and staying in close contact with each other. This smaller bird is very like a songthrush, but can be distinguished from it by the noticeable cream-coloured stripe above the eye. There is also a reddish patch under the wing which is very conspicuous in flight and which gives it its name. Even at night it can be identified as it flies overhead by its high pitched ‘tzeep’ call. Its Irish name is appropriately ‘deargán sneachta’ –or ‘the red snow bird’.

Neither of these thrushes breed here, but for the winter months watch out for them loosely scattered over the greener fields, hopping along and pausing now and again to pick up a tasty worm or other invertebrate. Fieldfare and redwing are often to be seen helping themselves to the bright red berries of hawthorn, yew and rowan. If you have had your eye on a beautiful sprig of holly flush with red berries for the Christmas decorations, only to go out one day and found it stripped bare, there is a good chance that the redwing or fieldfare have beaten you to it! They seem to be a lot more numerous this year. Their coming south equates to us heading off to the Riviera for a winter break!

May we at Cabragh Wetlands wish you all a very happy and peaceful Christmas, and take this chance to thank the many people who have supported our work over the course of the year.

Adaptation

Fr. SeánMcDonagh SSC December 10, 2009.

Last year at the Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland, I wrote an article about the importance of prioritizing the Adaptation Fund in any overall climate agreement. I made the point that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the primary goal of the whole process. According to Article 2 of the UNFamework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) the ultimate goal of the Convention is to achieve the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”.

However, it is important to remember that we are not talking about what may, or may not happen, in the future. In the 20th century average global temperatures increased by 0.74 degree Celsius, while sea-level rise, resulting from both the thermal expansion of the ocean and melting of ice across the globe, amounted to 17 cms. Even with a relatively small increase the Maldive Islands, several Small Islands states in the South Pacific and low-lying coastal nations such as Bangladesh, with lands surfaces barely a metre or two above sea level, would find that every storm and tidal surge represents a serious danger to human life. In fact, these areas may soon have to be abandoned by humans because they can no longer sustain human life.

So, Adaptation is designed to deal with the current and future casualties of climate change. From an ethical perspective it is about applying the moral principle that “the polluter must pay for the consequence of the pollution they cause.” Unless economically rich countries in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand and current major polluters such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the next decade, then catastrophic climate change is almost inevitable and it will affect the poor more severely. Because Columbans are missionaries, much of our work on Climate Change is focused on the Adaptation measure because these will intimately affect people in many countries in which Columbans work, namely, Peru, Chile, Pakistan and the Philippines.

The Fourth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was published in 2007, before the Bali Conference. One could summarize its finding with a few quotations from the document. It claimed that “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and oceans temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global sea levels.” It goes on to link these changes with human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuel to power our industrial economies, since the beginning of the industrial revolution,. “Most of the observed increase in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”.

Adaptation Fund received a lot of attention at both the Nairobi meeting of the UNFCCC in November 2006 and the Bali meeting in 2007. Disagreement centred around where the Fund would be located and how it would be managed. Economically rich countries wanted to have the Fund located in the IMF/World Bank complex, which would make it easier for them to control. This was anathema to many people from the South who suffered massive economic shocks as a result of the Third World Debt crisis in the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of attacking the banks that loaned the money or the governments that raised interest rates, the IMF/World Banks forced destructive Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) that often crippled the education, health care and welfare systems of economically poor countries.

While the architecture of the Adaptation Fund was finally agreed at Bali, the main problem that Copenhagen has to tackle is simply that the needs are great and there is little money in the kitty. It is estimated that at least $100 billion annually will be needed by 2020.

A favourable outcome Copenhagen would involve: Firstly, a shared vision on Adaptation itself, which would take on board all aspects of the Bali Action Plan. This would mean a massive increase in designing Adaptation plans at the national and international levels. Secondly, rich countries must fulfill the promises they made 8 years ago to fully fund the actions which will address the immediate impact of climate change between now and 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol runs out. Thirdly, Adaptation funding must be new and additional to the Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitment of 0.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which the UN has called on all rich countries to make. The money must be delivered as grants and not as loans.

Setting the Stage for Copenhagen

Rev. Seán McDonagh, SSC December 8th 2009

This is my fourth time attending the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). My first one was COP 12, which took place in Nairobi in 2006. About 5,000 people were present at the event, including country delegates, people from civil society organisations and the media. We all gathered at the headquarters of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Nairobi. Security was tight and all events closed down before 6 p.m. I stayed at the Maryknoll house which is situated just outside Nairobi. As far as I can remember the only Head of State who attended, the president of Kenya.
The following year, COP 13 took place on the beautiful island of Bali in Indonesia. It was housed in a complex of luxury hotels close to the beach. Because of the nightclub bombings in Bali some years previously, security was very tight. About 8,000 people attended among them two heads of State, the President of Indonesia and the, then, newly elected Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd. The most memorable moment in Bali meeting happened on the last evening when the US delegation was attempting to derail what became known as the Bali Road Map. In exasperation a negotiator from the republic of Vanuatu called on the US delegation to, at least get out of the way, if they did not want to be party to the negotiation process. The Bush Administration was opposed to any globally binding climate change agreement. The Bali Road Map set out the programme of work which would have to be completed in order to deliver a follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Protocol at Copenhagen in 2009. The reason why a robust treaty is essential here at Copenhagen is that the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

COP 14 took place at Poznan in Poland, in December 2008. I stayed at Capuchin monastery in the centre of the old city. On the first night one of the friars brought me for a tour and of the Christmas markets. I was particularly drawn to the ice sculptures, especially the intricacies of many of the designs. The Friar explained that traditionally these sculptures were carved in December and usually lasted through out the winter. In Poznan in December 2008, most of the sculptures had melted by the first Sunday of the Conference, a sure sign that climate change is already a reality. One of the disappointments of the Poznan’s meeting was the fact that European Union drew back from the commitments it had given at Bali, which was that rich countries, Annex 1 countries in the language of the COP, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 25% to 40% by 2020. The row-back was as a result of pressure from the coal industry on the Polish governmentj and the fact that Chancellor Angel Merkel of Germany was facing re-election in 2009. She did not want to alienate the car, steel and coal constituency.

It is estimated that there will be 15,000 people at the Copenhagen Conference, including 100 Heads of State. The opening ceremony took place on December 7th 2009. It was addressed by the Prime Minister of Denmark, Mr. Lars Lokke Rasmussen, He said that COP 15 was taking place at a time of unprecedented political good will. He urged the parties to reach an ambitious agreement in order to deliver “hope for a better future” for all.

He was followed by the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Mr. Yvo de Boer. He hoped that Copenhagen would result in an agreement on significant elements of the on-going negotiations. These include: Mitigation, which means cutting carbon emissions drastically in rich countries: Adaptation which involves making financial resources available to economically poor countries which are now and, in the future, will be badly effected by climate change; Initiatives to protect forests as carbon sinks and to make clean, non-fossil fuel technologies available to countries in Africa, South Asia and Latin America are also part of the negotiations. He emphasised that Copenhagen would be successful only if it delivered significant and immediate actions, beginning the day the conference ends
Madame Ritt Bjerregard, the Mayor of Copenhagen highlighted the Copenhagen Climate Summit for Mayors which will take place from December 14th to 17th 2009. She said that the city of Copenhagen aimed to be carbon neutral by 2025. She called on the negotiators to “go very far and very fast” and turn Copenhagen into “Hopenhagen.”

How Robust is the Science of Climate Change?

Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC, December 9, 2009

In the run up to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, hackers broke into computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Centre and got access to many private emails exchanged between climate scientists who have worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This ignited a global controversy about the reliability of the IPCC’s data and methodology. It forced the chief scientist at the centre of the row, Professor Phil Jones, to step down temporarily as head of the university’s climate research centre, while an independent enquiry into the matter was being conducted,
Many of these emails were seized upon by climate sceptics who claimed that scientists associated with the IPCC had excluded data from scientists who questioned the IPCC’s consensus that human-induced activities, especially burning fossil fuel, are significant elements in the current planetary global warming. News outlets such a Fox News in the U.S. and conservative politicians such as Senator James M Inhofe, the Republican Senator from Oklahoma, and Tony Abbott, the new leader of the opposition in Australia and Nigel Lawson in Britain claimed that the content of the emails vindicated their scepticism.
So, everyone expected that the chair of the IPCC, Prof. R.K Pachauri would deal with the issue at the first possible opportunity at the Copenhagen conference. At a meeting on the “IPCC Findings and Activities and their Relevance for the UNFCCC Process” on December 9th 2009, Pachauri addressed the controversy head on. He said that “it is unfortunate that an illegal act of accessing private emails communication between scientists who have been involved as authors in the IPCC assessment in the past has led to several questions and concerns. It is important for me to clarify that the IPCC as a body follows impartial, open and objective assessment of every aspect of climate change carried out with complete transparency.” He pointed out that “the IPCC relies mainly on peer reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment and follows a process that renders it unlikely that any peer reviewed piece of literature, however contrary to the views of any individual author, would be left out. Furthermore, “the entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments. Consequently, there is, at every stage, full opportunity for experts in the field to draw attention to any piece of literature and its basic findings that would ensure inclusion of a range of views.” He went on to emphasise that “there is no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications that are peer reviewed.“
He was at pains to point out that the IPCC reports while using the best available science, are not completely dependent on scientists. “I would like to highlight the fact that the summary for policymakers of all the reports of the IPCC are accepted and approved by all the governments of the world.”
As a consequence of this painstaking and thorough process “no individual or small group of scientists is in a position to exclude a peer-reviewed paper from the IPCC assessment. Likewise, individuals and small groups have no ability to emphasize a result that is not consistent with a range of studies, investigations, and approaches.” There are many layers in the IPCC process, beginning with the large number of authors, from a wide range of scientific disciplines, who are involved in the writing process. On top of that, there is an extensive monitoring and review process and, finally governments sign off on the findings. As a result Dr. Pachauri rejected any biased findings. On the contrary he claimed that “the IPCC assessment Reports are comprehensive, unbiased and based on the best scientific data available at the time. Its findings can be relied upon and can form the basis for relevant policy decisions by policy makers. The remit of the IPCC does not allow it to become policy prescriptive.”

At the end of his statement he returned to the illegal hacking of private emails at the University of East Anglia. According to Pachauri the private emails have been taken out of their proper context. If I say, in a private email, that I could kill a particular scientist for writing a non-peer- reviewed, contrarian article about climate change, it doesn’t mean I plan to buy a gun and go out and shoot him. It means that I am as mad as hell, because I believe promoting non-peer reviewed, contrarian positions muddies the waters and slows down the possibility for the decisive actions which will be needed to stabilize atmospheric gases immediately. It is essential that these decisions are taken here at Copenhagen in order to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, which will affect the poor disproportionately. According to Dr. Pachauri the “incident only highlights the importance of IPCC procedures and practices and the thoroughness by which the Panel carries out its assessments.” Whether these answers will satisfy the sceptics or those sitting on the fence remains to be seen.

Updates from Copenhagen

We are delighted to have updates from Sean McDonagh from the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen which we will be publishing on The Snipe over the next weeks

Copenhagen and Carlow

All eyes should be on Copenhagen, as leaders from 190 countries gather to try to thrash out a workable treaty to deal with the immense challenges presented by climate change. One of the earliest theories of global warming was put forward in 1824 by the French physicist Joseph Fourier, who explained that gases in the Earth’s atmosphere can trap heat like a glasshouse – the “greenhouse effect”. In 1861 John Tyndall, born in Leighlin Bridge County Carlow, published a work on heat radiation. He was an ordnance survey and railway engineer who studied physics in Britain and Germany (under Bunsen, of burner fame) and became a celebrated mountaineer, touring with Darwin’s right-hand man T.H.Huxley and making the first ascent of the Weisshorn in the Swiss Alps. He showed that water vapour and other gases combine to create the greenhouse effect: “This aqueous vapour is a blanket more necessary to the vegetable life of England than clothing is to a man”.

Tyndall was one of the pioneers of climate science, and is remembered today through the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester. His early work spawned a vast body of research involving chemists, physicists, geographers, oceanographers, geologists, botanists, naturalists and just about any branch of science that you can think of. The unanimity of these scientists is almost total. The Earth is warming, potentially very dangerously. Ten of the thirteen hottest years on record have been since 1995. The planet is at a temperature level not seen for 1300 years, and is overwhelmingly likely to get hotter over the next century. Yes, there is a cyclical element in the rise and fall of global temperature, but this rise is very largely caused by man through use of carbon-emitting fossil fuels to power our industrial revolution and economic growth since the mid-18th century.

There is a general consensus that a 2C rise is the largest that can be safely absorbed by life on Earth and human society. That is what Copenhagen is trying to guarantee, with countries pledging to reduce carbon emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020 This is a worthy goal and achievable if we adopt sustainable sources of energy (wind, water, waves, geo-thermal) or even nuclear power. In itself the consensus is that 20% is not sufficient to contain warming to 2C. Cuts of up to 80% on 1990 levels will have to be implemented within a generation, not easy when there are ”developing countries” wanting to ape the lifestyle of the materially prosperous, energy-greedy west. American and Chinese (and others’) pledges to cut emissions are currently way short of the short-term minimum requirement of 20%.

If you are a climate-change sceptic, or even a denier, then ask yourself if you are being rational. The unanimity of scientific judgement is so great, that to reject it without pointing to creditable research is no longer a valid position to hold. Yes, there is a small chance that tens of thousands of scientists are wrong, that they have colluded to mislead the public, that almost every government is deluded into backing the “20 by 2020” call. If they are wrong, then we should still take the chance to make changes to our lifestyle that will make a decent standard of life and living possible around the globe once fossil fuels run out in a few decades. Changes for sustainability need to be made anyway.

If moderate climate change opinion is right, we will all have to make adjustments to our lifestyle and to our values. Can we any longer place individual and national freedom above other considerations? Global standards and rules will be needed to get emissions to sustainable levels. Personal freedom to pursue economic growth and wealth is perhaps a value that is increasingly out of place in the new global reality. That doyenne of free-market capitalism and personal freedom, Margaret Thatcher, was herself a chemist by training, and as long ago as 1989 told the UN that “we are seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere. The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto”.

Climate change events are being held around Ireland this coming week. Try Kinnity Co, Offaly this Sunday (13th Dec) at 5.00pm. Show support for what more and more people are realising has to be done.

The Director of the Tyndall Research Centre, Prof. Kevin Anderson, has warned this week that 20% cuts are now simply token gestures. Global carbon dioxide emissions will peak much later than anticipated and will be reduced far too late for temperatures to be held at a mere 2C rise. He thinks we are almost inevitably on course for a 4-6C rise. This is a catastrophic scenario for human society and global life.

Volunteering and Community

It has been a memorable November for the Cabragh Wetlands Trust. The Star gave great coverage to our manager, Michael Long, who was awarded top prize in the environment category at the Ireland Involved Awards Night in Dublin, where prizes were presented by the President. Michael must take much of the credit for the expanding range of activities at the Wetlands Centre, and thoroughly deserved his moment of fame!

This week a group of us attended an Awards evening in Kilcommon Hall, where the North Tipperary Community and Voluntary Association (CAVA) Awards for 2009 were presented. The guest of honour, our MEP Alan Kelly, spoke about how CAVA was his favourite organization, because it is there to encourage, support and recognise the importance of work done by volunteers in local communities. Voluntary work is at the heart of do much that is good in our society today, and as we approach a very unsettled period in history, with climate change, economic downturn and many other problems threatening our futures, there is more and more recognition that the way forward has to be through local action and voluntary involvement.

Have we become too reliant on governments and local councils to tell us what to do? If more of us had the initiative to tackle problems in our communities by direct involvement and local leadership, the world would quickly be a much better place. One of the best ways of defining the difference between man and other species is that humans are working and creative animals, but we live in a period of history where we have been slowly transformed into consumers of the goods produced by others. Are we in danger of losing our creativity and independence as a result?

Think about your own community. Talk to friends and see what you can identify that could be improved by collective participation. The Cabragh Wetlands Trust came together to conserve an area of outstanding natural interest that was under threat. Do you have something similar in your area? Perhaps there is some old woodland that needs protection, or some waste ground that could be transformed with a bit of local effort. Non-environmental issues may be your concern – supporting local businesses, a farmers’ cooperative, preserving a village shop or local school, provision of cycle routes, help for the disabled or disadvantaged. Over the next twenty years, energy will be a massive issue for all of us. Is there something that could be done to provide renewable energy to your community? Could your local river be harnessed to produce power via a small water turbine? Can wind be used? Friends of mine bought a house in 1949, used a little windmill (about a metre across) on a ten foot pole to power a generator and spent the last 50 years of their lives using their own free and renewable electricity to run the house. Why not do this at a community level?

The possibilities are endless. Already we see farmers’ markets and allotments flourishing, as people recognize the need to take more control of their own lives and their own communities. If we all make sure our own piece of the planet is in good order, the threats we face in the coming century will be much reduced.

CAVA is there to help, developing networks of similar groups, providing training, helping with funding, empowering people, promoting equality and social inclusion, providing a forum where ideas can be shared and issues discussed, lobbying on behalf of member organizations to influence policy at all levels of government. You can contact CAVA at the Council Offices in Nenagh. Find a way to get involved and make use of this excellent organization